It is desirable to minimize the amount of human labor expended in maintaining and cleaning residential and commercial spaces. The art has therefore developed robotic devices that can clean or otherwise maintain or treat floors, carpeting or the like without the necessity for a human to be present during the operation of the device. The most common robotic devices of this kind are dusters, buffers, vacuum cleaners, floor sweepers, and floor polishers.
Such devices typically have a computer control program to direct a preferred movement pattern. The control is linked to steering devices as well as motors that are in turn connected to wheels. Many of these devices also include sensors to confirm the initial and later positions of the device relative to the pre-set path. The most sophisticated of these devices include sensors to detect the presence of unexpected obstacles, as well as programming to provide options for altered paths where that occurs. Examples of a prior art control system for such a robotic system are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,119,900 and 6,594,844.
As these devices are intended to be operated autonomously, and for a significant period of time, it is desirable to provide a supply of cleaning materials which is renewable and which does not require significant maintenance. It is also desirable that various types of cleaning supplies for various types of cleaning and floor surfaces can also be provided, in order to provide multiple cleaning functions from a single device. Various types of cleaning should not only be available, but easily implemented on the autonomous cleaning device.
Known in the art are various methods for providing a length of cleaning material in a reel to reel configuration. U.S. Pat. No. 4,433,451, for example, depicts a floor cleaning device which is designed to have a reel-to-reel cloth that is advanced during use. The cloth is used for cleaning and/or drying the floor, and may be a non-woven fabric. An elastic compression element forces the cloth towards the floor. The system is described as also being capable of delivering liquid. Another such system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,642 which describes the use of a mechanism for tightening a dusting cloth in a reel-to-reel system used for one type of flooring, here a bowling lane. Yet another system is disclosed in U.S. patent application 2002/0011813 which describes an autonomous floor mopping apparatus including premoistened toweling that transfers between a feed roller and a take-up roller wherein the toweling is pressed against the floor to clean the floor.
Also known in the art are certain removable cleaning elements. U.S. Pat. No. 5,933,900, for example, discloses a floor cleaning machine which can include a removable dust pan. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/051,312, filed Feb. 4, 2005, which is assigned to the assignee of the present application, discloses a cartridge including a reel-to-reel roll of cleaning material for use in a robotic cleaning device. The cartridge provides either an electrostatic dust cloth or wet mop, and includes a fluid reservoir for keeping the cloth wet during use. A dust bin is also provided on the cartridge, and includes a hinged lid for providing selective access to the dust inside of the bin. A motor, optical sensor, and fluid pump inside of a cleaning apparatus control the operation of the reel-to-reel cloth, and control fluid delivery to the wet cloth.
What is lacking in the art is a robotic surface treating device where a dust bin, a fluid reservoir, and a reel-to-reel cartridge of cleaning material are each separately provided on the surface treating device, and once these devices are installed, they may be separately replaced when, for example, the dust bin is full, the fluid is used-up, or the cleaning cloth material is either used-up or soiled to the point of inefficiency. The present invention addresses this need.